Imtiaz Sooliman – at AIE2023

Hear the genuineness in the voice of the person that speaks. And

that trend carried on throughout the year. And that's why 2020 was

one of our greatest years in terms of collection drive, when it was

one of the worst years for the country in terms of economics, job

losses, companies closing down, no economic activity, no export, no

import. And you could see people were very keen to do something

different. A man comes to the office and he says, Every year

I've been giving you a certain amount of money. This year I

haven't made any business for three months, not one cent in

three months, I'm going to give you four times the amount that I

gave you previously. Because he said, I'm suffering. What's

happening to the people outside and corporate South Africa said,

for the first time, we understand what pain and suffering is all

about, and we want to change our system. In 2021

when several unrest took place, you would think that the cockroach

would be angry because they lost shops, they lost malls, they lost

warehouses, they lost trucks and forklifts. Those are the first,

the guys who called first and said, we've lost everything, but

we want to help our our nation. And they the first ones who put

money down, and not small money, big money, came the floods. 11

April, 2022

that night, at half past five, the water rose eight meters in 45

minutes. And I thought the only calls I'm going to get is from

people in trouble. Want a boat, one helicopter. Want a diver, one

earth moving equipment. The boundary wall fell down, no such

thing. The only calls came from corporate South Africa and the

tiny right till 1am

they're not making business, they're not making profits,

they're not doing deals. They're giving away money. And they're

asking, What can we do to save our people. In this case, what do you

need? How can we help our people? And this carries a lot of weight,

considering that the suffer unless you think would anger people or

make them bitter, and yet, a year later, they're very willing to

make a meaningful intervention. That that spirit has continued,

but more and more corporates getting involved, and more

frequently, it's not like I gave you something on the first of

July. I'll see you next year on the first of July again. No, it's

more frequent now, because of virtual discussion, they call you

on Christmas day,

on newest day, on 31st December. We are holiday. We got free time.

We have to put that money into your account right now. 31st

December last year, we got calls from number of people. They want

bank details to put money into the into account. Now, let's be

honest, from first December, which South Africa works last year,

November we shut down, and it's been really heartening. And the

volume, and it's not only about the money, they're saying our

staff and us as a top management need to see what's happening on

the ground. We want to understand the pain of people, and that's

made a huge, huge difference. That's wonderful, but it's also

testament to the kind of work that you are doing. I've got a final

question for you on the issue of education, because we're sitting

here at the Graduate Institute of financial services stand today,

and this is an organization that is committed to ensuring that

future generations are educated. What do you think our education in

this country needs to be infused with in order for our children,

South African children, all children who are resident in South

Africa and who are learning in South Africa, in order for them to

be able to secure a future, we have to make kids patriotic. They

need to understand that this is their country. Yes, it has flaws

and has problems and has difficulties. How many countries

got that? So the first thing is to make them understand that you have

to be a patriot, and a patriot will do everything possible for

his or her country. Secondly, to infuse that patriotism, we need to

take care of the kids. We need an education system that has adequate

amount of teachers. Teachers not only are academically inclined,

but teachers who are spiritually inclined, who have compassion, who

have love. Because remember, a lot of the students come from very

damaged homes, alcoholic parents, parents not working, gender based

violence, friction in the house, no hunger, no food, you know, no

means of support. And they come from very, very broken homes, and

you find that they covered a lot of trauma. You can't do

educational

academics and learning, but if you haven't addressed a situation of

trauma. And so you need additional teachers so you don't have fossil

tickets in the class. In addition that, you need teachers who are

compassionate and caring. In addition to that, we need the old

system. In my time, it was called right, loving, I don't know what

other people call it, and where you taught subjects of value, of

principles you know, and how to behave in a correct manner. We

need to bring that back, but only, not only by bringing it back the

teachers and the management and the staff and the government body

has to live by what they teach. You have to be an example, and

parents have a huge role to play with that that you have made

example to your kids. The other thing that we we need to bring to

education is more special education needs teachers. There's

so many kids with learning disorders, they just want to fall

under.

Side, because nobody could take care of them. We don't have enough

of those specialists. We need to bring more of those into a normal

school system and call it full service school, which some schools

are like that. We need to bring that into the system as a

completely round of the school. You need sports facilities, you

know, to make the child have some energy used positively. Recently,

corporates, with us have been going and sponsoring astroturfs,

and that's making such a huge difference. I was at Patterson

high. Dennis Brutus was from there. Yes. James Carville was

from there. And the first anti apartheid person who died

detention Bota was also from there. And the teacher said, since

we've put in this astroturf. The kids don't sit outside smoking

anymore. They all come into play in medball or hockey or soccer,

and they're driving negative energy into positive energy, which

is important for the fulfillment of the of the teaching the last

part in every school, we gotta have water. You can't have a

school running that the kids can't go to that ablution block, so

proper toilets and water for drinking and for cleaning is

critical, and corpus can play a big role in funding this.

Government itself can't do it on its own. Doctor Suleiman, always a

joy speaking to you, and I want to thank you and your organization

again, your entire team, for what you do for our country and for

human beings all over the world with the stress we need you. Thank

you for being with us this morning. Thank you very much. You.